Improving the efficiency of wide-angle seismic data inversion through a nonlinear algorithm: case study of the MARCONI-3 profile

Wide-angle seismic reflection/refraction (WA) surveys provide data that can be modeled to obtain lithospheric-scale P-wave velocity (VP) models. The interpretation of these datasets is often performed as a laborious and time-consuming trial-and-error procedure, in which the relevant model parameters (layer thickness and VP) are manually adjusted until the forward modeling matches the observed travel-times. In this work, we present a fully automatic iterative nonlinear approach to invert WA datasets based on the simulated annealing technique. We test our proposed approach with data from the MARCONI-3 WA profile (southern Bay of Biscay) and compare the outcome with an existing detailed interpretation, discussing the similarities between the two models and the agreement between our model and the observed travel-times.